The militant fundamentalist lobby group with the tawdry manipulate-the-stupid name of “Focus on the Family” has successfully recruited Tim Tebow and his mother for another of their anti-choice, anti-abortion ads, which will air during this Sunday’s Super Bowl.

The message is based on Pam Tebow’s public speaking set piece story about how she was “counseled by doctors” while pregnant with Tim in the Philippines to have an abortion, even though abortion was, and still is, illegal in that country, even if raped or if the pregnancy jeopardized the health of the mother.

Mrs. Tebow has, to my knowledge, never actually identified the name of the doctor who supposedly risked his career and prison for this advice. Presumably, these records exist and this doctor may be still alive, but no mainstream journalist has seemed to look this up. Perhaps Tim’s birth certificate might help? Again, why is she so vague about the details?

Would a doctor in the Philippines be willing to risk the loss of his license to practice if he or she performed an abortion? Not to mention other serious penalties. Why can we find no corroborating witnesses? Perhaps the attending physician could provide records concerning the pregnancy and birth?

Never miss a chance to proselytize

It makes a great story in the life of St. Timothy of Tebow, and we can read his messages on the eye black under his helmet listing Bible passages each week, sort of like that Rainbow-haired guy in the 70s or the “John 3:10” people who fouled sports cutaways some years ago.

It is also the alliance of a major television network and a superstar athlete (well until the NFL draft) with a hate group. CBS also has rejected an ad for a gay dating site.

Lawyer Gloria Allred (who is not the issue here) has said, along with others, that she will bring action against CBS for false advertising if the facts in this ad cannot be proven. Shouldn’t CBS have standards in place to ensure their broadcast messages are accurate? Oh, wait, Focus on the Family is paying near $3 million. Maybe some of that could fund CBS News to actually find the truth, but apparently that is not what they do.

UPDATE: The commercial did not say “abortion” just that she ”almost lost him“, and for that I applaud them.

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No, Allred is the one who needs standards. How about informing the other part? That part where though as she points out the law is restrictive, prosecution for it is rare in that country. Or the part about hundreds of thousands of abortions done illegal in that country. Or how about coming clean and admitting that abortion contrary to her slams against Tebow, is in fact recognized in that country and by the UN’s report about that country as allowed for cases of mother’s life in danger.

The fact it is legal to suggest abortion in the case of the mother’s life in danger, so what the doctor did was legal.

So would a doctor be afraid to risk prison time and career? Not if what he did was legal.

And if illegal as you want to claim contrary to facts, not if the law is rarely enforced or prosecuted.

The fact that 20 percent of the hundreds of thousands of abortions are done by doctors disprove the notion no doctor would perform one, much less suggest one.

Why does Allred not mention those things while she purport to attack Tebow for leaving out facts? Oh, I forgot, she is not known for revealing things that disprove her pet theories. Oops, my bad.

Although the Penal Code does not list specific exceptions to the general prohibition on abortion, under the general criminal law principles of necessity as set forth in article 11(4) of the Code, an abortion MAY BE LEGALLY PERFORMED to save the pregnant woman’s life.

Despite the severity of the law, abortion appears to be WIDELY PRACTICED in the Philippines as a means of birth control and is RARELY PROSECUTED. The International Planned Parenthood Federation reports estimates ranging from 155,000 to 750,000 induced abortions PER YEAR.

Thanks for sending your research. Unfortunately, those policies were not in place in 1987. It was clearly illegal for an abortion under any circumstances. Pressure from the UN changed the law.

You rail about Gloria Allred when the issue is presenting facts. Wouldn’t you love to hear from the attending physician? I mention Gloria Allred only for the fact of her asking CBS to prove that the commercial presents accurate facts. Thanks for your posting but I reserve judgement until more facts are known.

By the way, amoebic dysentery may actually cause stillbirth, so perhaps that is what the doctor was referring to. it is usually treated with antibiotics but is more difficult to treat if the woman is pregnant.

You don’t have the facts, nor do Il. That is the point. Thanks for bringing up the changes in the law since then which may be of interest to many.

I applaud Joe’s willingness to publish Daredevil’s response, with all it’s research. I also appreciate Joe’s non-inflammatory reply.

If this commercial is aired, its anti-choice moral judgement is also a political message. CBS should balance it by assigning equal time to groups that are pro-choice. The stories of those other 155,000-750,000 women and their personal decisions to assert their reproductive rights might make for a few interesting commercials as well.

“You rail about Gloria Allred when the issue is presenting facts. Wouldn’t you love to hear from the attending physician? I mention Gloria Allred only for the fact of her asking CBS to prove that the commercial presents accurate facts. Thanks for your posting but I reserve judgement until more facts are known.”

No, you are still wrong. Focus on this quote: “Although the Penal Code does not list specific exceptions to the general prohibition on abortion, under the general criminal law principles of necessity as set forth in article 11(4) of the Code, an abortion MAY BE LEGALLY PERFORMED to save the pregnant woman’s life.”

Last I check the loophole in the law, that is article 11(4) predated 1987. And the fact prosecution is RARE for illegal abortions makes her point about the doctor could not have suggest abortion moot. If a law is not enforced, it’s worthless.

Allred is not seeking for CBS to prove those are facts. She is doing it to try to shut it down.

When it suits her, she will say the unborn is a real human being, as in the case of the Scott Peterson trial, when she referred to the man as a klller of two human beings, not one.

But when it suits her as pro-choicer, she minizies or denies the humanity of the unborn.

That’s another reason I don’t find her intellectually honest.

She knows full well the ad was about an inspiration story about Tebow and celebrating a choice his mother made. 30 seconds do not provide much time to get into the law. It’s not intellectualy honest for her to demand it gets into the law, when actually she wants it to get into only the parts of the law that suits her, not all of it, not how it is applied or proesecuted, etc.

Allred needs to be honest here. If she wants to include the law then she needs to include all the details.

Like the fact that prosecution is RARE.

Which means she has no argument, and she is being very misleading to argue only that the law is restrictive as her proof that it is real deterrent such that no doctor would risk his freedom and career.

By leaving out the other half- the prosecution being rare part- she is blatantly guilty of what she accuses the Tebows and CBS.

And this was what we know of Tebow as Gator fans long before he became famous to the rest of the nation, and long before he did the ad obviously. Allred and other feminists are not honest either in claiming this story is made up for the ad.

Thank you again for your passion. If, as you say, the law predates 1987 (which it doesn’t) that would only make it easier for a doctor to come forward and say he advocated abortion to save Pam Tebow’s life. Also, it was “amoebic dysentery” which is very common for Americans in tropical climes, and we do not even know the severity. Without a second source, the story is merely a claim. Like I won the Heisman Trophy.

Whether or not the story is true or a work of fiction is not really the point here. Shouldn’t a national network have more sense than to get involved in such a controversial issue? There is absutely nothing good that can come out of this airing of the ad for this extremist group.

And yes, they are an extremist group not unlike other extremist groups out there who only have the capacity to follow one particular thought, which by the way, may not even be their own. Instead many are simply brainwashed into their “beliefs” so they don’t even really have reasons to back them up other than what they have been told the reasons are.

I am disappointed in CBS for choosing to aire something like this simply because big corporate ads were again passed on this year becuse companies are doing the responsible thing in this economy and not paying the $3 million for an ad spot. That left the door open for this …

This has descended into an “itsy-bitsy” argument. Pre- or post-1987. If you out there in blogland got yourself an All-American education, then please start thinking instead of imposing your pseudo-religious based idea of freedom on the rest of us Americans. (By the way, 1987 was a mean season in America, if you think Reagan was demagoguing the poor and we had a shadow government of the military playing out the Iran-Contra scandal. And President Marcos of the Phillipines had just been tossed out of office and that country was a mess.)

The intent of this blog was not to attract Gator fans to object to pro-life-and-choice options (Yeah, most of us are for life and choice, and not trying to demonize the imagined opponent).

I am happy Tebow is around. He is talented. And he’s probably a very nice young man. I hope he doesn’t cheat on his future wife or significant other and I don’t give a crap if he’s gay or straight. I want him to play football, dammit. I don’t care about his deeply felt political, religious, and ideological views. And I don’t want to know about which Hollywood starlet or junior evangelista he’s banging premaritally or maritally.

Now here’s where you’ve really got to think. This is no time for ideology. His existence doesn’t logically support the anti-abortion cause, no more than does the existence of Rush Limbaugh, or Nancy Pelosi (I threw her in, because she’s red meat for the crazy right), or Orly Taitz (I’m Jewish and I think she’s a shonda. If you don’t know the term, look it up. That’s what education is about).

Now if you ask me, I think the real issue Joe was getting rightly steamed about is that CBS, the former Tiffany Network, sees poor and lonely Fox News all by itself and thinks-no, I’m sorry, I mean schemes that it can whore itself to almost any cause that’ll pay, but definitely not those damned gays. I mean really. Why should CBS prostitute itself to a company that allows people looking for real love to find it?

So for those who take umbrage at an honest inquiry about hypocrisy, and in memory of Esquire Magazine’s Dubious Achievement Awards, I say,:

Thanks that was a really great comment. It actually made me laugh, which is a good thing. Not because I disagree, but because it was so well said. I hope you have a blog because you just made me want to read it!